Business owners in Seaside Heights, NJ and Seaside Park are in disbelief. A fire that started yesterday at a boardwalk custard stand in Seaside Park destroyed all of that boardwalk’s businesses. It then quickly spread to the neighboring Seaside Heights boardwalk, where 20 businesses there burned. The devastation is horrific.

Last night, talking with reporters from Philadelphia TV news teams, people who’d owned boardwalk stores and restaurants for multiple generations said they had still been in the process of renovating their properties in the wake of Sandy when the fire came.